A debate broke out on Good Morning Britain on whether teens should be banned from having smartphones.
American social psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt said we should not have kids ‘exposed to random weirdos on the internet’ because the most sensitive time for brain development is puberty.
But Journalist Harry Wallop, who put his own 17-year-old daughter Celia on a smartphone ban for a week as an experiment, said there are positives to having a phone.
Mobile phones have already been banned in some schools in a bid to minimise disruption and improve behaviour in classrooms, while this week teachers were given an unprecedented alert about pupils being targeted in ‘sextortion’ scams.
The National Crime Agency warned all 570,000 primary and secondary teachers across Britain that children as young as five are at risk from ruthless criminal gangs from West Africa and South East Asia who are luring children online to send intimate photos of themselves, and then using them to blackmail them.
Jonathan, who wrote the book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness, revealed smartphones have ignited a ‘wildfire’ of anxiety and depression amongst young people around the world.
He said: ‘When you look at mental health statistics what you see is the rates of anxiety, depression and self harm were pretty stable in the late 1990s and early 2000s and in about 2012 is was like someone flipped a switch and girls all over the world began cutting themselves.
‘Boys are getting worse too, but with girls it was very sudden. With girls it is very clear there is a link. In 2010 girls didn’t have smartphones, they didn’t have Instagram with front facing cameras, by 2015 they had all of that.’
Making the link between smartphone use and self harm, he claimed the phones became ‘experience blockers’, saying: ‘They don’t have hobbies, they don’t read books and they don’t see their friends.’
Speaking about sextortion, which is a type of online blackmail where criminals threaten to share sexual pictures, videos, or information, the psychologist said children are exposed to ‘random weirdos on the internet’.
He added: ‘None of us would send out kids to camp out in a terrible dangerous neighbourhood and spend 10 years there, that would be insane. But we give them these devices that are designed to let strangers talk to out children.’
Jonathan added that children seeing violent videos online is extremely harmful to their brain development.
He said: ‘We care what our children take in, especially in puberty. The most important time for brain development is actually in puberty. That is when the brain is rewiring from it’s childhood form to its adult form.
‘There is research from Britain actually which states 11 to 13 years old is the age were the links between social media and harm are the strongest. Early puberty is exactly the time we should not be having our kids exposed by random weirdos on the internet.’
Although the psychologist said smartphones can be harmful to teenagers, journalist Harry argued that there are also positives to the devices.
Harry said: ‘They are incredibly useful devices and there are positives. Celia does spend too much time on TikTok. I spend too much time on Twitter. But she is mostly looking at cooking videos and makeup tutorials, it can be positive stuff as well.
‘Now it is very difficult, especially as an adult and a teenager, getting around a city. How do you live without a smartphone because train tickets, tube tickets, maps, everything now? It’s a mini computer.’
Harry’s daughter Celia, who was put on a smartphone ban for one week by her parents as an experiment, also joined in on the debate.
She said: ‘It was good to have time away from my phone and enjoy other hobbies but I felt quite isolated and lonely from my other friends and that I was missing out on things.
‘When I was back at school I didn’t find it too bad because I was surrounded by my friends, but the first day of the weekend was really hard.’
Many viewers took to social media to leave their own thoughts on the controversial topic.
One person said: ‘Can phones come with an underage mode? When setting up a mobile you have an underage option where parents can tick this, which will then give no access to certain apps or block them from sending videos or images via certain apps.’
Another said: ‘Let’s face it, they feel they need their phones as they are addicted to social media and the harmful consequences of it.. eg cyber bullying, comparison, FOMO, sleep disturbances and creating a lack of in-person socialisation, leading to issues around basic social skills.’
Someone else wrote: ‘Well I think them being locked in their houses for 2 years with hardly any education or face to face social time is a lot of it. Gaming and phones and technology are the future and there’s probably nothing anyone can do about it.’
Last month a Parentkid poll revealed that 58 percent of parents believe the Government should introduce a ban on smartphones for under-16s.
The mother of murdered teenager Brianna Ghey has also called for smartphones to be made available for under-16s without social media apps.
In January, Tory MP and former teacher Miriam Cates asked the Prime Minister to take the measure forward, noting that the UK ‘has a strong tradition of legislating to protect children from serious threats to their safety and welfare.’
A government spokesperson said: ‘We do not comment on speculation. Our commitment to making the UK the safest place to be a child online is unwavering, as evidenced by our landmark Online Safety Act.’
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Ellen Coughlan
